Sub Pop At the Katowice, Poland OFF Festival!

Sub Pop is very pleased to announce our involvement with this year’s OFF Festival, to be held August 1st-3rd
in Katowice, Poland. Now in its 8th year, the lineup features the
likes of Belle & Sebastian, Neutral Milk Hotel, Deafheaven, Glenn
Branca, Fuck Buttons, Loop, Earth, Dean Wareham, Dirty Beaches, Chelsea
Wolfe, Perfume Genius, Perfect Pussy and more to be announced.

Some say Rock N Roll will never reach
the same primitive raw vein hit of Bo Diddley at his more subhuman
lurch, or that no unit could ever scramble the marbles left of what
brain-boiling suburban electronic punk outsiders did in the mid-’70s:
Whatever you think, there is no denying the homemade nuclear war Wolf
Eyes has declared on music. Wolf Eyes was birthed in the shadows of
late-’90s Michigan. However, Wolf Eyes has grown beyond a band into a
collective mutant ensemble, an art abstraction unit: musicians, print
makers, photographers and more, all sharing a primal vision of decoding
the wilderness of the humanoid soul using their deep audio arsenals.

Before the release of clipping.’s debut, 2013’s Midcity,
the trio of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers Jonathan Snipes and
William Hutson did not expect to find an audience for their abrasive
brand of rap music. But since the formation of clipping. and the release
of their debut album, the field of commercial music enlarged ever so
slightly, making room again for noisier, more adventurous elements in
electronic production. Examples of this have been incremental, mere baby
steps, so far. And despite clipping.’s insistence that they’re really
just making rap— not noise-rap, industrial-rap, or any other mashup
genre— their music might be more sonically challenging than that of the
punkish rap rockers, lo-fi bedroom producers, and street goth
hybridist’s they’ve been lumped with so far. The band will release their
Sub Pop debut, CLPPNG, this June.

Lyla Foy (formerly known as WALL) released Mirrors the Sky,
her Sub Pop debut in March. The London singer and producer specializes
in intimate vocals effortlessly intertwined with delicate, emotive
instrumentation. The production is an integral part of her writing
process, capturing not only the intended notes but also the incidental
and accidental sounds that bring the recordings to life and provide
endless intrigue. While the patter of keyboards, guitars and pulsing
bass lines create a beguiling backdrop, it’s Foy’s sense of melody and
turn of phrase that takes centre stage. Subtle nods to classic refrains,
mingled with her own inflection, suggest a writer who draws from many
different eras, resulting in a sound that is both timeless yet modern.

Protomartyr’s taut, austere rock was
incubated in a freezing Detroit warehouse littered with beer cans and
cigarette butts and warmed, feebly, by space heaters. Despite the cold,
Protomartyr emerged with a sound that is idiosyncratic but relatable,
hooky but off-kilter. Protomartyr’s economical rock elicits comparisons
to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu or The Fall as well as local
contemporaries like Frustrations or Tyvek (whose frontman Kevin Boyer
played bass in an early iteration of Protomartyr). Singer Joe Casey’s
dry declarative snarl serves as a reliable anchor, granting his
bandmates — guitarist Greg Ahee, drummer Alex Leonard and bassist Scott
Davidson — the opportunity to explore textures and reinforce the rhythm
section. This is never more apparent than on the band’s sophomore LP and
Hardly Art debut, Under Color of Official Right.

Rose Windows began in late 2010 in Seattle. On their debut album, The Sun Dogs,
the band incorporates elements of The Band, The Doors’ organ-driven
psychedelia, and Black Sabbath’s dirges, along with Persian, Indian, and
Eastern European music. Rose Windows have toured the West Coast
several times, fluidly sharing the stage with underground art-metal
bands one night and popular indie Americana acts the next. The Sun Dogs was recorded and produced by Randall Dunn (SunnO))), Boris, Earth) at Avast! in Seattle.

Who said
you could only play rootsy, dirty, sunburned rock in Texas or Tennessee?
The duo Wild Books proves that you set out from a Polish garage to
follow in the footsteps of Jack White and The Black Keys. Wild Books’
self-titled 2014 debut record showcases retro-rock in its whole
ass-kicking glory.

Three years ago, this guy proved you could be a surfer in southern Poland. This year he’s back with Motörcycle Rock and Roll,
a mix of psychedelia, garage, and surf, or as he likes to call it,
“garbage rock.” Fortunately the sound quality is inversely proportional
to its aesthetic value. Maciej Nowacki’s music will blow your socks off,
even though he himself admits that the only reason he got into music in
the first place was to prove he was in the arts at parties.